I love the Monster hunter game series. For those who have no idea what that is, it's a game where you hunt monsters in a low magic fantasy setting, originally on the Play station series of consoles, and then Nintendo consoles, and now PC, finally. It is mainly a Japanese game series, but they release some across the world as well, now much more frequently then in the past.
I will go on about Monster Hunter games once I review an actual game of the series, for now, this is Monster Hunter: Legends of the guild, a Netflix movie.
Hold up. Why does that girl have butterfly wings.
This movie relies heavily on the fact that you've played Monster Hunter 4, and Monster hunter World. Or at least a Monster Hunter game recently. I made my mother watched this film with me I was so excited. She was just left confused.
This movie also moves fast, both because it's only 60 minutes long, and the 'camera' moves too fast in fight scenes. This is a problem even for me, who is young and used to fast moving cameras. The fact that they're trying to cram and entire 2 hour movie into an hour is also a problem. As you can see from the poster, there's six main characters in the movie. All of them have a past and backstory. All of them blurt it out in about a minute, because they don't have time to properly tell it.
If the film had been 30 minutes longer, it would've improved it greatly. On the other hand, 60 minutes means I didn't have to stay long or suffer from Aidan, the main character with the weirdly floofy hair. He is beyond annoying. On top of that, he keeps making puns with monster names, that only Monster Hunter players would know, thus further isolating my poor mother into the confusion corner.
The plot involves Aidans village, who happens to be in the path of a migrating Elder Dragon on the mysterious Elder Crossing(A phenomenon that is investigated and solved in Monster Hunter World). They of course refuse to flee, and he manages to convince the Ace Hunter, Julian, to help him and his village fight the elder dragon making a bee line for a land across the sea, no matter how many villages there are in its way. The plot is basic, but it works for what this is and in the time frame. For SOME reason, they also tell the story as a a story told by Aidan to the hunters on their way to the New World to investigate the Elder Crossing. This adds more confusion to non-monster hunter gamers, and makes the movie ten minutes shorter to explain or develop characters.
For those of you who play monster hunter, the monster is a Lunastra, the female version of the elder dragon Teostra, who we just call Toaster for short. While I'm on this, despite calling them dragons, they are not in fact, dragons. Lunastra and Teostra are based more on lions then reptiles So that further brought my mother to the confusion cliff.
But, the monsters and graphics and animations of the movie fit the Monster Hunter games -perfectly-. Sure, it's cartoony, and humans can somehow jump twice their height and do incredible feats despite being human and not Olympic athletes. They even included a Felyne from the games! Who is the only 'good' character of the entire film, because he's actually funny.
While I was more disappointed of this film then the Live Action Monster Hunter film, I did enjoy it more. I'd give it three stars as a Monster Hunter lover, maybe 3.5
Either way, I hope to review the live action monster hunter film soon. See you next time, peeps.
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